ABSTRACT
Carmelite spirituality is especially imbued with a sense of the heritage of Elijah who was said to have lived on Mount Carmel, the first location of hermits of the Order. Silence, or a particular understanding of the significance of sound, accordingly informs important aspects of cloistered eremeticism. This chapter presents Teresa de Jesus' references to hearing the sweet voice' of Christ in the manner of whistling'. She is interested in the salvative effects of sibilance and in silence as part of such sound, not necessarily its opposite. The chapter describes Anne of the Ascension's notes on taciturnity' stress the first and princypall effect of silence is to be more willing to hier others speech then ourselues as more estiming thir thoughts and affections then our own'. The nuns' emphasis on listening complicates assumptions about silence as oppressive, assumptions dependent on the idea that some speakers have definitional dominion or, discursively, that speech defines silence.
